News

Animate Store Opens

Animate, one of the largest anime chain stores in Japan has opened its doors in America!

On December 23rd, the very first ANIMATE store opened in America, located in Los Angeles, California.

ANIMATE carries a variety of imported and domestic products, including music CDs and VHS tapes from series as Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In addition, they have a website available here.

Excerpted from the official press release:Los Angeles, CA - ANIMATE, an anime goods chain in Japan has finally decided to have its first store in Los Angeles.

ANIMATE, Japan's greatest Anime chain store finally opened its first store in the US on December 23, 2000, with a line having formed before the doors even opened. Our wish is for ALL Japanese Animation fans in America to know what REAL Japanese Animation Collectibles are, from pencil boards to clear files, posters, key-chains, import VHS and CD's, manga, Lami cards, and even art supplies so the fans can make their own comics.

Our first store was born in Ikebukuro, Tokyo in 1983. Now there are over fifty Animate stores throughout Japan. That store flourished not only because of the tireless effort of its workers, but because of the fans' love for animation as well. Since then MOVIC has created many products ranging from Urusei Yatsura, to Nausicaa, Sailor Moon, to Neon Genesis Evangelion and many other fine Japanese Animation's, which have made it possible for our stores to grow to the finest Anime-store chain in Japan.

ANIMATE is one of the first total Anime and Manga collectibles stores that has grown with the devoted Anime fans. By selling products from our sister company MOVIC such as anime collectibles in all genres of Animation and Manga, Videogram, and comic supplies as our main products, we are able to grow with, and bring back our customers by having the newest merchandise for the newest series, and first run merchandise way after most other stores have run out of them. Not only selling collectibles, ANIMATE also offers Anime-fans a place to talk about Anime to each other, and where fans can express their opinions and give us input on our fine collectibles. This is one of the biggest reasons why Anime fans support us.

With the web page having been open since Fall 2000, the response has been great. We have a large list of registrants, with the first people having registered as early as November, waiting to receive information about upcoming events, and with new shipments coming in every two weeks we will have something to entice them with for a long time. Sometime in the near future we also plan to add a shopping feature that will allow people to order from the web page. It will include the same merchandise that we have in our store. Another thing being added to the website will be a survey that will last until about may, asking the fans and visitors what characters or titles they would like to see on a t-shirt with the outcome being, actual potential shirts to be sold in the store.

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